Charles A. Stevenson - Americas Foeign Policy Toolkit: Key Institutions and Processes

Key Institutions
and Processes

Charles A. Stevenson
Johns Hopkins University, SAIS

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Stevenson, Charles A.
Americas foreign policy toolkit: key institutions and processes / Charles Stevenson.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 9781-608719853 (pbk.)

1. United StatesForeign relationsTextbooks. 2. United StatesForeign relations administrationTextbooks. I. Title.

JZ1480.S79 2013

327.73dc23

2012012485

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

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Franklin D. Roosevelt in Peace and War, 19331945

Areas of Presidential Choice

Tables

6.2 Department of State Personnel and Foreign Missions, 19502010

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I m not much of a handyman, but I recognize the value of having just the right tool for a particular task. I also know, from embarrassing experiences, the wisdom of carpenters, who say, Measure twice; cut once. To do a job right, you need the right tool and the knowledge of how to use it.

I have a heavy, cast-iron, 14-inch adjustable wrench that is ideal for plumbing work but not much else. I have an ingenious right-angle screwdriver that can reach where a long stem wont fit and where I cant even see the screw, such as on curtain rods. I also have a Leatherman multi-tool that can do almost anything except pound nails. I used to live in a small town that had a tool library, where I could borrow that rarely needed item like a wood plane or floor sander.

The U.S. government has its own tool library for foreign policy activities. And, policy makers would do well to heed the advice about picking the right tool and calculating twice before using it. America has the State Department for diplomacy, the Defense Department for military activities, the Treasury Department and numerous other organizations for foreign economic policy, and the intelligence community for spying, analyses, and covert actions. The president and Congress get to decide how much to spend on these tools, which types and how many to buy, how to keep them well oiled and sharpened, and when and where to use them. Americas Foreign Policy Toolkit: Key Institutions and Processes is about those tools and the processes for using them.

The books title refers to foreign policy, a commonplace term, but its subject is more accurately national security in the broadest sense of that term. U.S. officials now recognize that Americas survival and success in the world require dealing with nontraditional issues like climate change, environmental degradation, disease, and human rights along with the traditional topics of defense, trade, and diplomacy. This requires the exercise of numerous instruments from a broad reach of agencies, from the Department of State to the Department of Agriculture but does not always result in a consistent policy.

In the course of my professional life, I have had the opportunity to work, at least for a time, in several of the institutions described in this bookthe U.S. Senate, Department of State, Department of the Treasury, and the Department of the Navy. I have also worked closely with people in the White House and National Security Council (NSC), the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the U.S. House of Representatives. More recently, I spent two years on the Project on National Security Reform, studying ways to improve the structures and processes of the U.S. government for more effective policy development and execution. From these experiences, I learned that, while officials understand their own agencies quite well, they often do not appreciate the strengths and weaknesses or quirks and capabilities of other institutions. I wrote this book to give students, analysts, and practitioners a better sense of how the different agencies think and operate, the pressures they respond to, and when and how they work together. I also wanted to show how the different institutions can be integrated into a coherent policy and yet why it is so hard to maintain a consistent foreign policy strategy.

For many years I was director of the core course on The Interagency Process at the National War College. My studentscolonels and navy captains, foreign service officers, and career civilianshad two decades worth of professional experience in their home institutions and knew very well how to plan military operations, run an embassy, or analyze foreign threats. But, they often werent really sure what the other government institutions did or could do. Believing quite properly that all the instruments of national power should be coordinated as part of a national security strategy, the military officers would say, We need to do some diplomacy and do some economics.

What did that mean? Send a foreign service officer to a reception or to talk tough to a foreign minister? Send somebody with bags of money that could be given or withheld from a foreign official depending on his or her response to the couriers demands? Those notions were vague and different from how those tools are in fact used.

My course, and this book, are designed to tell students and practitioners whats in Americas foreign policy toolkit and how the instruments work. The focus is on institutions and processes rather than the substance of foreign policy, but there is ample evidence that process can affect substance: Who sits at the table and what they are best at doing matters greatly.